Kathy Part 4

I may live to regret this, but I’ve decided to extend this never-ending conversation once again.

Kathy, this time, it would be a nice change of pace if you would actually address what William has repeatedly been saying to you:

I have. Not saying i’m perfect at it or that I’m right, but the “evidences” you listed arent real evidences. And since you refuse to look at things that are counter to your current beliefs, how can you honestly speak to me about evidences?

here’s all I’ve seen you provide:

1) martyrs, even though every religion and many non-religions have them.

2) our very existence – which no one knows how that started, but even if you must land on god(s), you must go back to that book of claims to get to jesus.

3) there were miracles, but as it turns out, those dont happen today, and end up being more claims by the same men who claim they speak for god.

4) the fulfilled prophecies we’ve discussed weren’t really prophecies at all, or had to be viewed so figuratively that it’s difficult to show anything precise about them other than location (maybe) in order to claim they’re actually fulfilled.

5) 40 authors taking 1500 years to write the bible. But there’s nothing miraculous about men writing books, editing books, and being inspired to write a book or letter after reading an older book.

About that last point, if the Bible had been written by 1500 people scattered across the globe, who didn’t know one another, and they did it in 40 days, then you’d really have something incredible. But 40-ish people, all familiar with the Jewish god, and writing over a long period of time with the previous writings as reference, is not that impressive.

My email is temporarily down, so I had to get WP to send future comments to my <in His own image email addy, but that left about 10 or so still on Yahoo, that I couldn’t access, so I got the idea to go to Nate’s site, read the ones I still hadn’t seen, and respond to them, but when I got to Kathy-3, comments were closed. SO, I’m bringing these over to Kathy four. I should be able to get all future comments.

@Nate – “I agree, kc. I’ve seen Karen Armstrong refer to it as something similar to the ‘royal we.’” – I mentioned it as well in my second chapter of in His own image – the translation was done for King James – who, writing for a king, would leave out the concept of the Royal “We”? It would imply that their god was a lesser ruler than their king.

@KC – “I have enjoyed the comments made by the girls here at you ! Priceless ! – They gotta sleep SOMEtime —

And YOU, you traitor, deserve to be thrown off the highest mountain in Kansas!
(No one who’s never been there, will ever get it –)

Gen 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky,..”

kc, you said:

” Kathy , you are correct that Elohim has a plural usage in the OT. Show us where the Plural Usage points to a Son and a Holy Spirit ? This is certainly your intent by mentioning it at all. ”

You take into account the other passages.. you find the CONTEXTUAL meaning. And when you do that, you see the Trinity.

Arch,

““Elohim” was the collective title of the Canaanite pantheon of gods – there’s no “blatant conflict” there. The “Yahwist Source” that wrote much of Torah, came from the Southern Kingdom, closer to where the earlier Israelites joined forces with the Midianites for a time, likely 50-60 years (personified by the fictional character, “Moses” – “Baby,” in Egyptian), and acquired the Midianites’ obscure desert god, YHWH, while the “Elohist Source,” from the Northern Kingdom, located in Shechem, up near Canaan, were more heavily influenced by the Canaanite’s religion, and hence the name, “Elohim” was more often used.”

There you go again, spouting “facts” without any back up. Post your references for these claims. I’ve already told you I don’t trust your judgment.. YOU LACK OBJECTIVITY. There are tons of books out there targeting you and everyone else here.. all who choose to reject God. They NEED to get creative in their explanations/ aka anti God propaganda.. the more convincing they are, the more books they sell.

Not sure if it’s best to reply to Kathy’s comment, or if we should all shut up to let her respond to the post… Nate, feel free to advise us.

Kathy,

[To KC:] You take into account the other passages.. you find the CONTEXTUAL meaning. And when you do that, you see the Trinity

SHOW. US.

Not “trust me, go look”. Show.

[To arch:] There you go again, spouting “facts” without any back up. Post your references for these claims. I’ve already told you I don’t trust your judgment.. YOU LACK OBJECTIVITY. There are tons of books out there targeting you and everyone else here.. all who choose to reject God.

I’m also interested to know where arch for this info, and you make a good point that someone making a positive claim has the burden of proof. And yet:

– Look at the double standard you’re applying here. You’re making infinitely more grandiose claims.
– You’ll just handwave away any sources he cites anyway, and cry “liberal atheist propaganda!” Even if it’s from a deist or something.

“There you go again, spouting ‘facts’ without any back up. Post your references for these claims. – I’ve done that at least three times, Kathy, I’m tired of posting evidence you can’t be bothered to read.

“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky,..” – clearly you’re trying to point out the “our” references, that’s how royalty speaks when they mean first person singular – read a book, Kathy, that isn’t the Bible —

Speaking of, “so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky,..” – how good, exactly, have we gotten at telling either one of those animal groups what to do? Some rulers, huh?

About your last point Nate: “if the Bible had been written by 1500 people scattered across the globe, who didn’t know one another, and they did it in 40 days, then you’d really have something incredible.”

If the legend was true, it would be quite telling evidence in favour of some sort of divine hand at work. Unfortunately, the legend has nothing to do with the historical processes forming the LXX (and indeed very few Christians or Jews would say that it was a reflection of reality at all).

The myth is where we get the name Septuagint (or LXX) from, though.
Interestingly, Muslims have their own legends about the perfection of the formation of the Quran, which they argue points to its divine origin (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Qur%27an)
Unfortunately, the Bible has nothing so impressive. 😦

I think as long as Kathy is of a mind that it is our comprehension/pride/ego and not her “evidence” there won’t be much progress in discussions.

I would ask, though, that if my comprehension is faulty is that a thing I can be faulted for? My inability to comprehend say, theoretical physics, isn’t considered a character flaw. And it for darn sure won’t send me to hell.

Cracking – if you like legends, you’re gonna love Legends of the Jews, by Louis Ginzberg. Did you know that when, in Gen 14, Abraham and his 300 ninja-shepherds chased those five, seasoned, battle-hardened Mesopotamian armies nearly the length of the Levant, 100+ year old Abe grew to nearly 80 feet tall. Each of his steps was a furlong, and by the time the ninja-shepherds caught up to him, he had the armies pretty much licked all by himself.

“Geez, arch, you’re calling us (w)itches like it’s a BAD thing! 🙂” – Not at all, Carmen, I was merely suggesting that you and your cove – Ladies Aid Society might possibly have better things to do than thinking of denigrating things to say about my poor hose.

Kathy, this is from the Wikipedia page on Elohim. It pulls this info from sources that you can check out at the bottom of the wiki page. I’m going to underline what I think are some of the more important points in this section.

When used with singular verbs and adjectives elohim is usually singular, “god” or especially, the God. When used with plural verbs and adjectives elohim is usually plural, “gods” or “powers”.[1][2] It is generally thought that Elohim is a formation from eloah, the latter being an expanded form of the Northwest Semitic noun il (אֵל, ʾēl[3]). It is usually translated as “God” in the Hebrew Bible, referring with singular verbs both to the one God of Israel, and also in a few examples to other singular pagan deities. With plural verbs the word is also used as a true plural with the meaning “gods”.[3] The related nouns eloah (אלוה) and el (אֵל) are used as proper names or as generics, in which case they are interchangeable with elohim.[3]

Mark S. Smith said that the notion of divinity underwent radical changes throughout the period of early Israelite identity. Smith said that the ambiguity of the term Elohim is the result of such changes, cast in terms of “vertical translatability” by Smith (2008); i.e. the re-interpretation of the gods of the earliest recalled period as the national god of the monolatrism as it emerged in the 7th to 6th century BCE in the Kingdom of Judah and during the Babylonian captivity, and further in terms of monotheism by the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism in the 2nd century CE.[4] A different version was produced by Morton Smith. Despite the -im ending common to many plural masculine nouns in Hebrew, the word when referring to the Name of God is grammatically singular, and takes a singular verb in the Hebrew Bible.

The word is identical to the usual plural of el meaning gods or magistrates, and is cognate to the ‘l-h-m found in Ugaritic, where it is used for the pantheon of Canaanite gods, the children of El and conventionally vocalized as “Elohim”. Most use of the term Elohim in the later Hebrew text imply a view that is at least monolatrist at the time of writing, and such usage (in the singular), as a proper title for the supreme deity, is generally not considered to be synonymous with the term elohim, “gods” (plural, simple noun). Hebrew grammar allows for this nominally-plural form to mean “He is the Power (singular) over powers (plural)”, or roughly, “God of gods”. Rabbinic scholar Maimonides wrote that the various other usages are commonly understood to be homonyms.[5]

It is a fact that El was the supreme god of the Canaanites, and Elohim is a form of that word. El’s wife was Asherah, and if you remember correctly, the Israelites were often criticized by the priests for continuing to worship Asherah in addition to their “true” god — coincidence?

To say that Elohim, in its plural form, references Jehovah, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit rather than being a reference to the Canaanite pantheon has no basis. Just like the notions of Heaven and Hell were later additions to the Jewish religion (they believed in Sheol — a single realm of the dead that all people went to, good or evil), not showing up until the Jews had been under Persian and then Greek rule, the idea of a divine trinity can’t be found until the New Testament, if then.